Police identify Lakeville couple who allegedly stole thousands of dollars worth of items from area Home Depot stores

Thursday

Jul 17, 2014 at 7:56 PMJul 18, 2014 at 2:30 PM

Michael Ellis, 27, and Stacy Reynolds, 26, will be summoned to Taunton District Court

Charles Winokoor Taunton Gazette Staff Reporter @cwinokoor

TAUNTON — Police have identified a Lakeville couple who they say have been stealing large-ticket items from The Home Depot stores in the Bay State’s southeastern region.

Taunton police say Michael Ellis, 27, and Stacy Reynolds, 26, both of 1 Birch St., will be summoned to Taunton District Court to face charges of larceny over $250 and criminal conspiracy.

Ellis and Reynolds, police said, had managed to steal items from The Home Depot stores in Taunton, Somerset, Seekonk and Bridgewater during the past few months. They also reportedly tried but failed at a Brockton store.

Taunton police Detective Robert Pavadore said he met with the company’s southeastern Massachusetts regional loss-prevention director on Wednesday in Dartmouth.

Pavadore said the security director had information from Somerset police identifying Ellis, whom they previously had taken into custody, but not Reynolds, who managed to leave the parking lot before police arrived.

A database search, Pavadore said, produced a match for Reynolds.

He said when he brought a photo of Reynolds to the Dartmouth store, a loss-prevention employee from Somerset who was there at the time said she could positively identify Reynolds as the woman in the photograph.

The incident at Taunton Home Depot occurred on May 21, police said.

Police said the Lakeville couple had worked out a simple system of subterfuge to distract cashiers just long enough for them to load up their car and escape.

They said Ellis would fill his shopping cart with expensive items, like air conditioners and chain saws, and would proceed to a more secluded cash register, usually one favored by contractors.

Reynolds, meanwhile, allegedly would load her cart with an abundance of small items ranging in value mostly from 50 cents to a dollar apiece. The two of them, police said, would make it clear to the cashier that they were a couple.

After Ellis’s items were rung up, police say he would tell Reynolds and the cashier he was going outside to load his stuff into his vehicle. The cashier then would ring up the more numerous smaller items, which took considerably longer.

When everything had been rung up, police said, Reynolds would give the cashier a credit card to pay for both the small- and high-ticket merchandise. The purchase, police said, inevitably would be denied by the credit card company or bank, at which point Reynolds would supposedly call Ellis on her cellphone to ask him to come back inside and pay.

When he failed to answer his phone, Reynolds allegedly would tell the cashier she’d be right back, and then would leave her inexpensive purchases with the cashier while she went outside to ask Ellis to come in and settle the bill.

The couple would then drive off together, police said.

In the case of the Taunton theft, police said the two stole more than $1,400 worth of merchandise, including a power washer and chain saw.

“I definitely think they thought it all out,” Pavadore said on Thursday.

“Who knows,” he added. “They probably did it by mistake one time and figured (to themselves) that this is easy.”